Site Mobile Navigation

A Mormon Spectacle, Way Off Broadway

The Hill Cumorah Pageant, based on the Book of Mormon, kicked off last weekend on a hill between Manchester and Palmyra, N.Y., where it is said that the angel Moroni appeared before Joseph Smith.Credit
Guy Solimano for The New York Times

MANCHESTER, N.Y. — With its cast of 700, 1,300 costumes, 10-level stage and thrill-a-minute special effects of earthquakes, floods, fireballs, airborne deities and burnings at the stake, the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, one could argue, has more in common with the spectacle of “Spider-Man” than with the merry snark of “The Book of Mormon.”

But then the pageant — staged between here and Palmyra since 1937, on the very hill where, it is said, an angel named Moroni directed Joseph Smith to uncover golden plates 188 years ago — really is the Book of Mormon, a Cecil B. DeMille-style presentation of the holy book rather than the cheerfully profane Broadway version.

This one begins with a prophet named Lehi warning the people of Jerusalem about 600 years before the birth of Christ that they must repent and, after side trips to ancient America, ends with the message of the Book of Mormon filling the world and the Savior’s return just around the corner.

Photo

Mark Stone, an actor, preparing for his performance.Credit
Guy Solimano for The New York Times

The setting, with a statue of Moroni towering above, and the price — free — will never be confused with West 49th Street in Manhattan. But if you want to get the Mormon view of the extended Mormon moment, including the Broadway show and the two Mormon presidential contenders, there are few better places than this combination of a white-shirt pilgrimage to Mecca and a G-rated version of Bonnaroo. The pageant began last weekend and runs through Saturday.

“Mormons are weird — we’re strange people; we get it,” said Rob Moffat, one of the show’s production managers and an actor, singer and songwriter in Los Angeles. “But we’re O.K. with the lifestyle we’ve chosen, and it comes from a very true place in the heart.”

Message 2 is that few Mormons expect their collective 15 minutes of fame to change them much, other than perhaps providing the opportunity for more outsiders to take a look under the hood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Photo

Costumed actors mingled with the crowd before the show began at dusk.Credit
Guy Solimano for The New York Times

“I got interviewed by a lady locally, who was asking if Mormons are becoming more mainstream, and I don’t think so,” said Benjamin King, 26, a student at West Virginia University, who has been in the pageant since he was 18. “It’s not like there’s a new fad. Maybe we’ll have a Mormon president, like a new pair of stretch pants. Instead I think people are seeing the values we’ve always had.”

Every July, about 35,000 Mormons are drawn here, about 25 miles southeast of Rochester, where, it is said, God and Christ appeared to Smith in 1820 in a peaceful grove. Three years later, the story goes, Smith dug up the gold plates, which were buried 1,400 years ago, and which he translated and published as the Book of Mormon in 1830.

Missionaries began gathering here annually in the 1920s, a show began in 1937 with the title “America’s Witness for Christ,” and it has become more elaborate ever since, with the voice of God booming over the hills and increasingly “Star Wars”-like effects. In recent years, visitors have included the Broadway show’s creators — the two people behind “South Park”— who took in the Hill Cumorah Pageant as research for their own script and then parodied the pageant in their opening.

Participants and visitors come from all over, like Grant and Penny Owen of Coffs Harbor, Australia, who were on a tour of Mormon sites in Central and North America; Judy Bronco of Pocatello, Idaho, who said an ancestor of hers, Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, helped the Mormons settle the West; and Paige Chatterton, 17, a cast member from Frisco, Tex., who wants to be a neurosurgeon, is one of three Mormons in her high school and takes pride in steering clear of the standard high school excesses.

Photo

An actor portraying Joseph Smith, who, it is said, uncovered the golden plates, which he translated and published as the Book of Mormon in 1830.Credit
Guy Solimano for The New York Times

The crowd had its stereotypical touches: missionaries in white shirts, neat ties and plastic name tags; youngsters in Boy Scout uniforms, Brigham Young University T-shirts or blue ones reading, “Doubt Not, Fear Not”; and adults in khakis and golf attire, with an occasional “Stand With Mitt” T-shirt blending in with others reading, “Work Hard Pray Hard.” The edgiest notes were a vogue for “Wicked” T-shirts and two youths from near Attica prison in modified black heavy-metal attire.

Many Mormons are a bit offended by Broadway’s version, which few have seen and most do not plan to. Marcia Leavitt and her husband, Stanley, retirees from Kamas, Utah, were philosophical about the Mormons’ place in popular culture and politics.

“A lot of time I feel like they’re trying to make the Mormons get down to their level rather than reaching up to the level that we’re trying to maintain,” Ms. Leavitt said as she toured a recreation of the Sacred Grove, where Smith is said to have had his vision of God and Jesus.

Her husband added, “We’re in the world, but we’re not of the world.”

Still, in or of the world, others saw the conservative Mormon persona — in addition to the candidacies of Mitt Romney and, to a lesser extent, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — as worthy counterweights to less savory trends in American life.

Photo

Spectators at the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a 70-minute show that uses a 10-level stage.Credit
Guy Solimano for The New York Times

So Paul Rylander, a controls engineer from nearby Lockport, noted that no one had found any dirt about Mr. Romney. “I want someone with good Christian morals to run for office,” Mr. Rylander said, peering from the top of the hill to the stage below. “It doesn’t matter what faith they are. I’m so tired of things being shoved down your throat, so I want good Christian morals from the leaders of our country.”

In the late afternoon, the cast members put on their biblical-era costumes and got their makeup done amid reminders on the walls like “Be Nice. No Matter What” and “Thank You for Being Reverent.” Then they all milled in the audience, shaking hands and posing for pictures as solemn orchestral music befitting a religious epic filled the air.

At dusk, the 70-minute show began with heraldic trumpets, the set suggesting the carved stone of a Mesoamerican temple. The storms and disasters poured forth from 12 light towers, water cannons and flame tubes. The narrative unfolded in 10 chapters of Mormon lore. The portentous recorded music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony Orchestra seemed to indicate that the whole place might ascend heavenward at any moment.

Outside on the street, a few protesters with bullhorns and placards directing people to Web sites like What Mormons Don’t Tell shouted their disapproval, calling the performance idolatrous and wicked and the depiction of Christ and his teachings untrue.

But inside, it was all smiles and talk of uplift and inspiration, this particular Mormon moment apparently exactly what this crowd had in mind.

A version of this article appears in print on July 14, 2011, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: A Mormon Spectacle, Way Off Broadway. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe